


we walk blind

by megaera (songaboutlove)



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Gen, Pre-Time Skip, aka aka: siblings :(, aka: edelgard and dimitri but it's not terrible and they dont hate each other for no reason
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 13:50:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21162683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songaboutlove/pseuds/megaera
Summary: “There are no girls like me,” Edelgard said.Dimitri shook his head. “I know.”





	we walk blind

Edelgard shut the door to the Great Hall behind her, huffing out a breath. The sounds of the ball grew muffled behind the heavy oak door as she walked away, tugging her cape closer around her shoulders and shivering in the cool night air.

Just before she’d left, she’d been standing to the side of the room with Hubert on her right, smiling as she watched Dorothea whisk Linhardt onto the dance floor, despite his complaints, and insist he perform a traditional Adrestian dance with her. She’d laughed quietly behind her hand as Linhardt reluctantly participated, much to the delight of Dorothea and the other Black Eagles, who had gathered around them and had begun cheering him on.

“Why don’t you go and join them, Hubert?” she’d said, straightening her jacket.

“I will keep you company, Your Highness,” Hubert had replied.

Edelgard sighed. “Oh, thank you, Hubert, but please – join them. I’d like to step outside for a breath of fresh air, anyway.”

He’d looked at her with mild concern, as he often did when she said she wanted to be alone, and she could tell a complaint was beginning to form on his lips, but she’d brushed it off, slipping through the crowd of students unnoticed and leaving him to it.

It wasn’t that she was having a bad time, or that she didn’t want to be around the other students of her house. Quite the opposite, in fact. Against her better judgment, Edelgard had grown unbearably fond of each of them in the months they’d been at the monastery together, and would have liked nothing more than to laugh with them as they watched Linhardt dance with Dorothea. But fondness was a dangerous emotion – a weakness, really – for a future leader of the Adrestian Empire to have. Especially one with ambitions as lofty as hers.

Edelgard couldn’t guarantee that any of them would share in or even understand those ambitions, when the time came. It was just easier not to form such attachments, lest they cause her to falter in her quest. Preparations had already begun, after all, and she couldn’t risk anything interfering – least of all her own feelings.

So, here she was. Running away before she could indulge in such a weakness.

Perhaps she was not the only one. Dimitri was standing there with his back to her when she ventured out into the courtyard. He was standing so still that anyone passing by might, at first glance, mistake him for a statue. With his face turned up to the stars and his form lit by moonlight, he looked especially youthful. Almost vulnerable, in a way that she knew he had not allowed himself to be in a long time.

Seeing him there, Edelgard was struck with a sudden vision of the boy with the tear-stained cheeks who had bid her farewell when she had left Fhirdiad as a child. It seemed like a lifetime ago now.

The vision didn’t last long. His shoulders stiffened the moment one of her footsteps rustled the grass and just like that, he became Dimitri, crown prince of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus again. He turned his head to look at her.

“Edelgard?”

She was reminded of a time when he had called her by a different name, one that she rarely heard now but still held close to her heart. She wondered if he even remembered it anymore.

“Dimitri,” she replied, walking up to him as he turned to face her fully. His brow was furrowed and his eyes were like chips of ice in the pale moonlight, but still, Edelgard recognized a certain softness in the angles of his features, the very same kind that she disliked seeing in her own.

“What are you doing out here?” Dimitri asked.

“I needed some air,” she replied. “And you?”

“The same,” he said curtly.

Silence fell over them. Edelgard regarded Dimitri for a moment. It occurred to her that this was the first time the two of them had been alone together since they had arrived at the monastery, without Dedue or Hubert trailing along behind either of them. It was odd, considering their relationship, that they didn’t know how to talk to each other without hiding behind royal airs and formality. She supposed that many moons of separation would do that.

“Your hair,” Dimitri had said when she had first arrived at the monastery, looking surprised, then mortified at the involuntary remark.

“What about it?” Edelgard had responded, coldly. He had no way of knowing, of course. Nobody knew. Still, she didn’t appreciate being gawked at. Dimitri’s royal upbringing had quickly taken hold of him again as he bowed deeply.

“My apologies,” he’d said. “It is lovely.”

Edelgard wondered how she and her scorching white hair looked now. Something about the way the moon shone on Dimitri's head tonight made his golden hair look like a halo, or a crown. She was sure she didn’t look the same. She thought of an old children’s story told in Faerghus, about a queen who sealed herself in a castle of ice to shield herself from the world, and in doing so had frozen along with it. Perhaps that was how he saw her now.

“It feels that it's been years since we last spoke, hasn’t it?” Edelgard said finally. “Just the two of us, I mean.”

Dimitri cleared his throat and averted his gaze. “We haven’t had many opportunities to meet before coming to the monastery.”

“Ah, but we find ourselves so close to each other now, and still we don’t speak,” Edelgard said. “Do you think there’s a reason for that?”

“Perhaps that we have nothing to speak of,” Dimitri replied, crossing his arms over his chest. “We have little in common, after all.”

“Right,” Edelgard said. “For example, I like training in the late afternoon, and you like running away from the girls you ask to dinner.”

Dimitri looked taken aback, his face flushing slightly as he sputtered: “There’s – you saw that?”

“Petra saw it and told me,” Edelgard clarified, holding back a laugh but letting her mirth show in the smile that sprang to her face. “You should stop taking advice from Sylvain, you know.”

Dimitri groaned and put a hand over his face. “I know. Clearly all it does is humiliate me in front of my classmates.”

“Hmm,” Edelgard said, unable to resist teasing him some more now that he was flustered. “You can’t run away from girls forever. Someday you’re going to have to face them.”

“If all of them are like you,” Dimitri mumbled. “Then I’d rather _not.”_

“There are no girls like me,” Edelgard said.

Dimitri shook his head. “I know.”

Edelgard still couldn’t quite see his expression but there was a smile in his voice now, too. Though Dimitri was careful to be courteous and polite to everyone he spoke to, very rarely did she see him smile. He lowered his hand from his face and she caught a glimpse of it briefly, a bright, flickering thing that disappeared from his face quickly but could still be felt in the way his eyes had softened.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go back inside?” he asked. “It’s cold out tonight.”

“That’s not a problem,” Edelgard said. “I’ve grown used to the cold since I came here.”

Dimitri paused before speaking again, as though he was considering his next words carefully.

“I remember you complaining about the cold in Fhirdiad,” he said, gaze faltering. It was the first time either of them had openly acknowledged the time they had spent together all those years ago. Edelgard clenched her jaw, feeling all of a sudden as though something in the conversation had shifted beneath their feet.

“Well, I was very young,” she said. “Going that far north was difficult for me.”

“And now?”

“Now I would brave it without complaint, no matter how cold it got,” Edelgard said. “I’m not a baby anymore.”

“So you would not complain, but you would still find it cold,” Dimitri said, the corners of his lips twitching.

“That’s neither here nor there,” she said dryly.

Dimitri was good at keeping his expression level, but Edelgard noticed that some of the tension in his shoulders had relaxed, and that some of the royal airs with which he usually spoke had been abandoned. If she lived this moment in isolation, she could almost pretend that they hadn’t grown up worlds apart, that they had gotten to be children together, and that they were free from the trappings of royalty.

She could almost forget that she was planning to do something that she knew would tear them apart for good.

“I think I must be getting back,” Edelgard said suddenly, and it seemed to take Dimitri by surprise.

“Oh?” he said, and she could sense him slowly returning to who he was, and how he was supposed to behave.

“Yes,” she said, perhaps more tersely than she needed to. She wasn’t certain why it was this moment that had frightened her enough to make her want to leave it. Perhaps it was the sudden reminder of the plan she would soon set in motion, or the kinship that she was coming dangerously close to feeling with Dimitri, or the winter chill, after all. Whatever reason she had was unclear to even herself.

“In that case, I will come with you,” Dimitri said, and he was back to his stern, noble self again. “I expect people are wondering where we both are.”

“Of course,” Edelgard replied, ducking her head to avoid his gaze as they made their way back across the courtyard and back towards the ball. As they walked in tense silence she could feel the last moments that they would be alone together slipping like sand through her fingers. There were more things she wanted to say but she could think of none of them. She suspected he was the same.

They arrived at the Great Hall, where the sounds of the ball were still as lively as when she left it. Edelgard went to open the doors but Dimitri put his hand out to stop her, looking a tad bashful all of a sudden.

“I should like to speak with you again sometime,” he said, voice steady. “If the opportunity arises.”

“So would I,” Edelgard replied, and felt a sudden pang of wistfulness. She knew there would be no other opportunities. Their brief meeting in the courtyard had already become a memory to her. But still she smiled, and pushed open the doors for them to walk in together.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm pretty sure that canonically edelgard doesn't remember dimitri gave her the dagger, which is, like... okay LOL  
also where tf does the ball actually happen cause ive looked at the locations and i cant tell so i just made up a new location


End file.
